The 10 Most Influential Surfers of All Time | The Huffington Post The 10 Most Influential Surfers of All Time 12/02/2013 12:14 pm ET | Updated Feb 01, 2014 Alexander Haro Associate editor, The Inertia Steve Robertson via Getty Images From surfing's early beginnings as the "Sport of Kings" in Hawaii, it has held a certain sway over spectators and participants alike. While estimates of the number of surfers worldwide vary wildly (from 5 million to 23 million), there are a select few that, for one reason or another, have left an indelible mark on surfing. The interesting thing is that in most cases, it's not so much for the actual act of surfing, but for what they did to significantly alter the course of things to come. From the Duke to Gidget, this is a list of a 10 of surfing's most influential people. #1. The Duke Duke Kahanamoku is hailed as the father of modern surfing. A full-blooded Hawaiian from Honolulu, Hawaii, the Duke is responsible for spreading a view of surfing that has since soaked into the masses and stuck fast.

Born in 1890, the original Beach Boy was the first of five children, all of which turned into extraordinary watermen in their own right. Kahanamoku however, was head and shoulders above them all. At the young age of 20, he broke the American short-distance swimming record for the 50-yard sprint and the beat 100-yard world record by almost five seconds. The next year, in 1912, he set another world record at the Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1920, he won gold in the both the 100 and 400-meter freestyle relay. All this acclaim brought him-and his surfing-to the forefront of the public's perception of watermen. After a disc jockey from Honolulu became his manager in 1961, the Duke became the face of a litany of businesses that used his surfer image paired with the now-popular Hawaiian lifestyle. At the age of 77, Duke Kahanamoku died of a heart attack, after a lifetime of piling the building blocks that would become modern surfing. He was named Surfer of the Century in 1999, and the U.S.

Postal Service issued a stamp honoring him in 2002. #2. Miki Dora Miki Dora is, in large part, responsible for the rebel-side of surfing. The undisputed king of Malibu in the 1950s and early '60s, "Da Cat" rode with what is possibly the most definitive style in surfing's history. On and off the waves, Miklos "Miki" Dora carried himself in such a way that attracted throngs of followers and hangers-on, much to his very apparent disdain. Thought of as somewhat of a walking contradiction, Miki seemed to often seek out attention, then chastise who ever gave it to him. For all of his fame and press, Dora remains today one of the least known surfers. While much of his personal life has been exposed on paper and in countless books, one thing that remains constant in almost all of them is his aura of mystery, who some say was slightly affected in an effort to stay in the public's eye. He spent much of his life as a loner, not for lack of people in his life, but for his own personal dislike for most of them.

"I don't expect everyone to live my life," he said in an interview . "Why should they? It's pretty lonely." Born in 1934 in Budapest, Hungary, Dora's parents divorced before he was ten. His mother married a surfer named Gard Chapin from California, who, according to David Rensin in All For a Few Perfect Waves, drank heavily in his later years. Chapin was regarded at one point, as California's best surfer, and introduced Miki to the sport at a young age. As a teen, he spent most of his time bouncing from San Onofre to Malibu, and frequented spots in between. As he grew older, though, he spent more time at Malibu, eventually mastering the wave in a way that no one had before, or has since. He turned his back on the Gidget-era, horribly disappointed with how Hollywood's intervention on his beloved lifestyle changed it forever, but conflicted at how easy it was for him to make a quick buck in it, given his stature at the epicenter of the movement. Dora died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 67, after a troubled few decades.

A warrant was issued for his arrest in the early '70s, which was quickly followed by a few more. By the mid-70s, he was on the run, and stayed that way until 1982, when he spent most of that year in jail. One of the most fitting descriptions of Miki Dora came from a London Times obituary that described him as a "West Coast archetype and antihero... the siren voice of a nonconformist surfing lifestyle." #3. Kelly Slater There aren't too many people in the world of sport that even come close to Kelly Slater 's accomplishments in surfing. As one of the winningest athletes ever, Slater's victories span his entire career, starting from his rookie year. In '91, he took home the Rookie of the Year award. In '92, he took home the World Title after cementing it at Pipe. The 1990s saw Kelly Slater register possibly the most dominant performance of any athlete in any other sport. Banzai Pipeline was a major part of that dynasty, as he won the Pipe Masters in '92, '94, '95, '96, and '99.

Not to mention a few Backdoor Shootout titles. For perspective, imagine if Rookie of the Year, Nat Young, won the World Title next year, then continued to win for the next decade. By the time he was twenty, he was the youngest ever world champion. Slater is from Cocoa Beach, Florida. Born in 1972, he began surfing at the age of six. By the time he was eleven, he was so far ahead of his competition it didn't seem fair -- winning four consecutive United States Surfing Championships. At eighteen, he turned professional and started on the road to where he is now: the best competitive surfer the world has ever seen. In 1992, Slater took the role of Jimmy Slade on the hugely popular Baywatch, effectively rocketing him into star-status -- and bringing surfing to the masses in a way that no one had before. After winning his sixth world title in 1998, Slater retired from full-time contest surfing. He started a band (which didn't do very well, unlike almost everything else he touches) with Rob Machado and Peter King, fittingly and somewhat unoriginally called the Surfers.

In 2002, he returned to competitive surfing, and after a brief warm-up for the first year, Slater ran into Andy Irons and started surfing's most-watched rivalry. By 2011, he had broken every pro surfing record. His home state of Florida has a Kelly Slater Day and a 10-foot tall statue of him. GQ Magazine called him one of the 25 Coolest Athletes of All Time, Surfer Magazine called him the Greatest Surfer of All Time, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bipartisan resolution honoring Slater's competitive achievements, and one of his surfboards is in the The National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian. Not bad for a guy that slides around on top of the water on a piece of foam. #4. Doc Paskowitz While he would never agree, Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz can be considered one of the earliest pioneers of the shape of today's surf culture. He spent nearly 25 years on the road, living in a succession of used campers. It is, quite possibly, the world's longest surf trip.

He and his wife raised nine children in those campers, soaking them in the ocean and their idea of how life should be lived. He and his family have been referred to as "The First Family of Surfing." Born in Texas in 1921 to a Jewish family, Doc graduated from Stanford Medical School at the age of 25. After a successful stint as a doctor, he packed his wife, Juliette, into a used camper van and started what would become one of the most interesting surf-centric lives ever. He and Juliette ended up raising nine children in a number of different vehicles, always on the move. His take on education, health, and how humans should spend their time didn't mesh with society's standards, and his children were steeped in his ideals -- which, for the most part, drew few complaints. Surfing's slant on searching for waves can be, in part, attributed to Doc. What became a lifestyle that was slightly molded by the ideals found in such films as The Endless Summer was something that the Paskowitz family was unapologetically living, despite the public's view of how things ought to be done. #5.

Laird Hamilton Despite the grumblings of a few in the surf community that Laird's contributions to surfing have done more harm than good, the mark he's left on it is undoubtedly a large one: his innovations have shaped the way people surf. Born in San Francisco halfway through the '60s, Laird Hamilton 's father left the family to join the Merchant Marines when Laird was five months old. His mother took him to Oahu and married a man named Bill Hamilton. Laird began surfing at a very young age, largely in part to his mother's new husband. Sometime in the early '90s -- accounts vary on the matter -- former world tour pro Buzzy Kerbox and Laird Hamilton decided to try towing into waves from behind Kerbox's boat. Tow surfing was born, and in a short period of time, Laird, along with a group of wildmen, had started a PWC-powered revolution, with its headquarters at Maui's Jaws. Hamilton excelled at much more that surfing, though: in 1990, he and Buzzy Kerbox crossed the English Channel in just under six hours.

He held a European speed record in the mid-'80s after reaching a speed of 36 knots on a sailboard. He invented foil-boarding -- which was not exactly an original idea, but the application to surfing was. Although foil-boarding never really took off, it is a reminder of Laird's dedication to breaking boundaries. On August 17, 2000, Hamilton broke more of those boundaries when he surfed what was then the thickest, heaviest wave ever ridden. Dubbed the Millennium Wave, his ride at Teahupoo cemented his already solid roll as surfing's premiere big-wave surfer and rocketed him to an almost legendary status. #6. Nick Gabaldon Nick Gabaldon was surfing's Rosa Parks. Born in 1927, Gabaldon taught himself to surf in the 1940s at a segregated section of beach in Los Angeles called "The Inkwell," located 12 miles north of Malibu. Sometime in the late '40s or very early '50s, Nick, not owning a car, made the long paddle to Malibu, surfed all day, then paddled all the way back.

After following the same routine for nearly a month, some of the local surfers began giving him a lift, quietly speaking volumes and defying conventions in an America that, by enforcing racist legislations (that weren't formally dismantled until 1965) prevented many blacks from entering the ocean or swimming pools. On June 5th, 1951, Nick Gabaldon surfed a solid south swell at Malibu. He was killed after riding into the pier. On February 7, 2008, a plaque in Santa Monica was dedicated to Gabaldon's contributions to the sport of surfing, and June 1st was named "Nick Gabaldon Day." While not much is known of his early childhood (probably because of society's view on race at the time), Gabaldon was a student at Santa Monica High. The barriers he broke were indicative of the direction America was moving at the time, and his hands were on a small part of a larger wheel. #7.

Jeff Spicoli For a non-existent person, the character played by Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High has had a larger influence on how the non-surfing public views surfers than any other person, real or fake. Jeff Spicoli 's role in the hugely successful Fast Times single-handedly threw the surfer-stoner blanket over the heads of everyone that stepped on a surfboard, which to the chagrin of many, is still something pervasive today. Released in 1982 by Cameron Crowe, Fast Times at Ridgemont High became somewhat of a defining film for many surfers. It increased the numbers in one of surfing's sub-cliques, and through its popularity in the American masses, did almost as much for the perception of surfers as Gidget. Fast Times at Ridgemont High was selected by the U.S. National Film Registry for preservation in 2005, being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." #8. Gidget Kathy Kohner was born in Brentwood, California.

In the mid-50s, the diminutive Kohner began frequenting Malibu, and became somewhat of a mascot for the local contingent there, including the likes of Terry "Tubesteak" Tracy, Johnny Fain, and Miki Dora who helped paint the landscape of California surfing. According to David Rensin's All For a Few Perfect Waves, it was Tubesteak that gave her the name "Gidget" when he called her a girl-midget. The name stuck, and her father, a screenwriter, took on her story as a book project in 1957. In a month and a half, the novel was done and full of his daughter's stories from the beach. The book was turned into a movie in 1959, and turned into a phenomenon. The quiet perfection of 1950s Malibu was stormed by armies of inland surfers, all desperate for a piece of the lifestyle that was depicted. This was the true beginning of surf culture as we know it today: Surfer Magazine was founded the year after, and the Beach Boys began their meteoric rise to fame. The 1960s saw many more Gidget novels and films released.

Interestingly, Gidget's happy go-lucky demeanor came hand-in-hand with Miki Dora's angst-filled rhetoric against the crowding of his home break-two completely different outlooks on surfing and the lifestyle that goes with it born on the same beach at the same time in history. #9. Sean Collins Sean Collins changed surfing forever. Without him, modern surf forecasting wouldn't be where it is today, leaving thousands of would-be surfers in their homes, wondering what to do with themselves. Born in Pasadena in 1952, Collins began surfing in the '60s and took a serious interest in how waves were made, where they came from, and more importantly, where they were going to be. A college dropout with no meteorological training, Collins was a testament to passion: his love for surfing pushed him to learn something that eventually changed his life and the lives of millions of others like him. According to The Encyclopedia of Surfing, he packaged data from ships, NOAA charts and satellite photos to build his own surf forecasts.

Early '80s Baja trips turned into somewhat of a science experiment, with Collins plugging a fax machine into his car battery and throwing a hundred-foot antenna wire out and collecting satellite images of the Pacific before choosing the beach he was heading to. In 1984, word of his wave-predictions had spread, and he joined Surfline, a new company that, before the arrival of the Internet, allowed people to get rough surf forecasts over the phone. In 1987, he left Surfline and founded WaveTrak, a service that did essentially the same thing as Surfline. In the early '90s, the two companies merged, and began their takeover of the surf-forecasting world, keeping the name they still have today. In 1995, Surfline moved to the Internet, a previously uncharted territory, and turned the corner to what the company looks like now. In 1998, he bought the operation outright, then sold it in 2000 to Swell.com, but maintained his position as lead-forecaster.

Collins' forecasting opened doors to waves like Cortes Bank, a seamount a hundred miles off the coast of San Diego that changed big-wave surfing forever. When Sean Collins died in December of 2011, thousands of people honored his life and his contributions to surfing in a paddle-out at Huntington Beach. #10. Bruce Brown Bruce Brown did more to bring surfing to the non-surfing public than anyone else. Producer of surfing's most influential and famous movie, The Endless Summer, Brown was born in 1937 in San Francisco. He made his first surfing movie at the age of 18 in Honolulu while he was in the navy, and made one every few years until 1964, when The Endless Summer was released. Brown, along with Mike Hynson and Robert August, set out to film the perfect wave, and ended up with 95 minutes of what would become a big part of surfing's backbone in the years to come. In 1965, Bruce Brown showed the movie in Kansas, a landlocked state, and it outsold My Fair Lady, a film that won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

After being transferred to 35-mm and re-edited, Newsweek called it one of the 10 Best Films of 1966. Almost 30 years later, Brown filmed The Endless Summer II with his son, Dana. The sequel was an attempt to recreate that initial film, featuring Robert "Wingnut" Weaver and Pat O'Connell as they try and follow in the footsteps of Hynson and August. It missed the mark,ironically, largely in part to the evolutionary fire under surfing for which the first film was kindling. The Endless Summer portrayed surfers differently than any other film before-not as lazy, beach-bum types, but as something a bit more passionate: people in search of perfection, and willing to go, literally, to the ends of the earth to find it. Bruce Brown also was the first to film the Banzai Pipeline. The groundbreaking footage he took of Phil Edwards that day in 1961 was featured in his fourth film, Surfing Hollow Days.

More: Kelly Slater Surger Net Worth, House, Girlfriend | Famous Worth Kelly Slater Surger Net Worth, House, Girlfriend 6 months ago Add Comment American surfer Kelly Slater has a net worth of$20 million today. Born in 1972, today he earn good salary, own a house, dated with 3 girlfriends till 2016. Robert Kelly Slater popularly known as “Kelly Slater” is a famous surfer from America. He won the title of the “world surf championship” for the consecutive five years from 1994 to 1998. He was the youngest star who won this title. He was also crowned the Association of surfing professional world at San Francisco. Net Worth Cocoa Beach, Florida, United States Parents Judy Moriarity and Stephen Slater Height Endorsement $800,000 Slater’s birthday is on 1972 at Cocoa Beach in Florida. His parents are Judy and Stephen slater. Her siblings are Sean and Stephen. He loves surfing his favourite spots like pipeline in Hawaii, Jeffrey’s Bay in South Africa, Minis in Ireland and Sebastian Inlet which is beside his house.

Slater used to play golf and has a great interest in playing “JiuJitsu” which is a Brazilian sport. He was inspired by the Shane Dorian, Drew Phelps, Andy Irons, Alex Siddiqui and some more whom he admire the most. Apart from being a professional surfer slater in the year 1990 was also the part of a famous television show named “Baywatch” in which she played the consecutive character of Jimmy Slade and was also the part of one of the reality show “The Girls Next Door” which increased her salary. Slater also did the formation of a band group named “The Surfers” and released his album during 1998 with the name “Songs from the pipe”. The song was inspired by one of his favourite spot where he used to surf. He is also a performer as he performed with some of the famous singers Shirley Manson, Ben Harper and Grunge. Slater is known to be the highest paid athlete of the world. Later on, he released his first book “pipe Dreams: A Surfer’s Journey” which was his autobiography. He is also a speaker for the “Suicide Prevention Awareness” and raised a huge fund for it. He is also a guitarist.

This shows how versatile star Kelly Slater is. His multiple profession helped him to earn more and more. For his outstanding work he was also honoured by the “United States House of Representatives”. She was sponsored by the “Quiksilver” for which he was highly paid and hence increased his net worth Kelly Slater Built the Perfect Wave. Can He Sell It to the World? Kelly Slater Built the Perfect Wave. Can He Sell It to the World? The surfing legend's top-secret machine could change the sport forever. By Josh Dean | May 24, 2016 From Bloomberg Businessweek Last December, Kelly Slater, the world’s best and best-known surfer, released a short video on his Instagram feed. It began with a beautifully curling left-to-right wave, seven or eight feet in height, then cut to Slater in a knit beanie raising his arms in triumph. “Oh my god!” he yells. The next scene shows him slashing up the face of a similar wave and then riding inside the barrel as he says, in voiceover, “This is the best man-made wave ever made. No doubt about it.” Slater at the wave pool.

Photographer: Nathanael Turner for Bloomberg Businessweek The video, a teaser for a three-minute version called “Kelly’s Wave” that posted simultaneously on the new and otherwise empty website of Kelly Slater Wave Co. (KSWC), was shot on a long, narrow artificial lake in Central California. An on-demand wave of this size and duration has been the dream of surfers for decades, and now Slater was seeing that it was real. His team had engineered a mechanical right break that could be started with the press of a couple of buttons. The surf world’s reaction to the wave was no less ecstatic than Slater’s. The clip pinged around the internet, racking up millions of views and comments. On Surfer magazine’s website, a staffer posted the video with just a short caption: “I don’t know what to say and frankly it’s not worth wasting time reading. Watch the video immediately. To sum up: Kelly Slater Wave Company did it.

They made the dream wave we’ve all imagined wave pools could produce.” Six months have passed since the video was released, and though Slater’s team still prefers not to publicly identify the location, Reddit users found it—tucked among fruit farms and goat ranches outside the tiny town of Lemoore—within hours of Slater’s post, using his comment that he was 110 miles from the coast to scour the San Joaquin Valley in search of a sizable strip of water. That turned out to be a man-made lake, 700 yards long and 70 yards wide, originally built for water-skiing. The rundown house beside the lake has since been renovated, and the corrugated aluminum barn next door now contains a cedar-lined lounge and a room stacked with surfboards and wetsuits, many stamped with the place’s Surf Ranch logo, which features a bear on a board. The wave, too, has been tweaked. Slater asked for modifications to the lake’s bottom to adjust the wave’s shape and power.

But the biggest change of all is that Slater and his investors aren’t carrying the financial burden of this long, expensive, and speculative engineering venture on their own anymore: Today KSWC will announce that it has been acquired by the same group that owns the World Surf League (WSL), the professional tour on which Slater and all of the planet’s other top surfers compete. “This is a prototype,” Slater says, gesturing at a strip of dark water that looks like a seaplane runway, through a picture window in the house’s living room. He’s 44 but seems to have stopped aging at 35. He’s still a full-time professional surfer. “It’s a research laboratory,” adds Terry Hardy, Slater’s long-time manager and a partner in both KSWC and the WSL. In the aftermath of the video’s release, people speculated about what the wave might mean in real-world terms. Plenty of surf blog commenters fretted over the potential that a machine-generated swell down the road from an Indian casino could ruin the mystique of a sport that depends entirely on the whims of nature and that requires its best athletes to chase waves in beautiful and exotic places.

Others welcomed the idea of a realistic artificial wave that could bring surfing to landlocked states and countries, allow surfers to refine their skills without waiting for nature to provide a swell, enable resorts to focus activity around surf pools instead of golf courses, and even, perhaps, provide a way for surfing to achieve full medal status by the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. “There are a lot of obvious outlets for something like this,” Slater says, cautiously. The sudden emergence of the WSL as an owner indicates that the first application for the pools will be for world-class surfers; today’s press release announcing the deal will specifically mention “a global network of WSL-branded high-performance training centers.” But KSWC’s website also now welcomes “developer inquiries” under a computer-generated image of a beautiful circular wave pool flowing around an island shaded by palm trees. “I believe my job is to create and refine and evolve the technology,” Slater says. “For me, selfishly, it’s all about high performance, and it’s fun.

How you package that into a business, well, I think there are a lot of ways you can think of off the top of your head.” Slater’s obsession with wave pools goes all the way back to childhood, when he used to try to body surf on the artificial wave at Wet n’ Wild, a water park not far from his hometown of Cocoa Beach, Fla. At 14, he and his brother Sean—then emerging phenoms of American surfing—flew to Texas to demonstrate surfing on an artificial wave so small they could barely ride it. (They did, however, collect $70 in small bills other patrons had lost in the churn.) When he was 16, Slater won a professional contest at another inland water park and got his first Surfer cover in the process. In each case, the wave was essentially produced by brute force—something pushed a wall of water from the back of a pool to the front. “It was a novelty, that there’s always a wave right then,” Slater recalls. “But the quality and power was pretty minimal.” Slater didn’t necessarily want to be the person to fix this problem, but he hoped someone would do it. “I just thought, ‘How cool would it be?’ ” he says.

“People have tried for a long time to have a truly high-performance wave that’s controllable.” Recreational man-made waves have been around since the 1970s. If you’ve been on a cruise ship, you may have seen a FlowRider, on which a rider on a special board attempts to surf in place while water rushes past. But the quest to develop an authentic simulacrum of what pros ride at the world’s top breaks has proved elusive. Every so often, a concept emerges, then washes out. In 2004, Slater’s old surf coach and board shaper called to say that he’d seen a concept from a guy named Greg Roberts that looked promising. Slater talked to Hardy, and they decided to license the technology, only to decide two years later that it wasn’t quite right. Then Bob McKnight, co-founder of surf company Quiksilver, Slater’s longtime sponsor, recommended that Slater talk to the wave science guys at McKnight’s alma mater, the University of Southern California. Slater was pointed to Adam Fincham, a research professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering with a specialty in fluid mechanics. Slater rides an artificial wave.

Photographer: Nathanael Turner for Bloomberg Businessweek Fincham is originally from Jamaica and had spent much of his career working in Europe, so he says he “honestly had no idea” who Slater was when he came to visit him at his USC lab in 2006. Fincham knew a lot about waves, though, having spent years on a European Union program called Hydrolab, which exposed him to numerous large hydraulic facilities. Fincham says he thought, “Who’s this surfer dude with this crazy idea? Very quickly, I realized he was serious. He was very articulate and described quite precisely what he wanted to do.” Specifically, Slater wanted a high-performance barreling wave, one that would curl endlessly. “It was very clear that he didn’t just want a wave—he wanted his wave,” Fincham recalls. “It had to barrel; it had to have power; it had to have duration; and it had to be shaped in such a way that you could maneuver.” He wasn’t sure it was possible, but Fincham pulled together a team of colleagues and undertook a pilot study in 2007. They decided that, yes, it was possible.

By 2008, Fincham was the director for science at KSWC and had moved to a laboratory in a warehouse in Culver City, near Los Angeles. Along with a small team, he built a 1/15-scale model of a concept that seemed feasible: a hydrofoil—imagine something like an underwater airplane wing—would create a swell, then turn that swell into a surfable wave by using a specifically shaped bottom to cause a break, as happens in the ocean. They proceeded, Fincham says, “as if we were building an aircraft carrier or an airplane.” They built a theoretical model, then a lab model, then a computer model run on multiple supercomputers at the same time. From talking to surfers, Fincham learned that the best waves in nature were typically associated with a swell that could be described mathematically as a “solitary wave” or “soliton.” This is a wave that covers immense distances while maintaining its shape and velocity until something disrupts it—for instance, a reef or the shore. That became his target in the warehouse pool. By late 2014, it was time to put the concept to a test in the field.

After shopping for more than a year, the company settled on the plot in Central California where the engineering team could work with no interference. The site sits behind a cedar fence along a dusty road where houses are few and far between. Secrecy was a concern, certainly, but the real reason the prototype wave is in Lemoore is that the land was cheap, about $575,000 for 20 acres. To find a plot of that size with a lake outside L.A. would be a ridiculous waste of money for a startup that Slater describes as “thrifty.” (And for good reason—a large chunk of the funding came out of his pocket.) One of the first things people ask, Fincham says, is whether the wave can be bigger. Can it, for instance, get huge, to produce a simulation of Oahu’s absurd “Pipeline,” devourer of men and boards? Given a large enough pool and foil, he says, it’s possible, but that was never Slater’s vision. “Our objective is the quality of the wave,” Fincham explains.

“Kelly made it very clear that if it met his criteria—if it had shape and power and form—that he would ride that all day long.” Source: Todd Glaser In early May, Slater invited his first guests to the Surf Ranch. The group included three professional surfers and some of the key leaders of the WSL, including commissioner Kieren Perrow and Chief Executive Officer Paul Speaker. Perrow is in essence the chief surfing officer, the guy charged with protecting the sport and overseeing all things related to competition—including, crucially, whether the conditions are good enough on a particular day to surf. Perrow is a former pro; Speaker, a nonsurfer, created Perrow’s position when he took over the league in 2012 to help assure the athletes and the industry that his ascension, as a man who came from New York and wore suits, didn’t indicate that the priorities of surfers were about to take a back seat. Speaker, who’s held executive positions at RKO Pictures and the National Football League, took an interest in the business of surfing after joining the board of Quiksilver in 2010.

He says it stood out as the action sport with the biggest potential for growth in terms of both fans and participation. People didn’t age out of surfing the way they seemed to do with snowboarding, skateboarding, or BMX, and it was almost uniquely aspirational, with a culture and style that’s as much a lifestyle as a sport. The Association of Surf Professionals tour, as the league was then known, was struggling under a disjointed management structure—half-owned by pro surfers and half-owned by the endemic surf brands, with a governing body that licensed the rights to specific events to different partners. This made it difficult to aggregate audience or sell global sponsorships. Speaker joined forces with Hardy, and with the financial backing of the reclusive Florida billionaire Dirk Ziff, took over the ASP and rebranded it as the WSL. Speaker quickly chased global sponsorships (signing Jeep, Samsung, and InBev) and invested heavily in technology to cover surfing events—adding helicopters and drones. The WSL controls its own media rights and archives, but, until now, it was at the mercy of the ocean. Surfers can sometimes wait a week or more to actually compete, and that makes TV next to impossible.

Instead, the WSL broadcasts over the web, via Facebook and its own app. Speaker, Perrow, and the professional surfers couldn’t believe what they were seeing that day in Central California. You can witness that in the videos posted to the KSWC website, and in the social media posts they all put up later. “It’ll be a day I’ll never forget for the rest of my life and I can’t wait to see how the sport of surfing evolves with this new technology,” pro surfer Kanoa Igarashi wrote on Instagram. “I couldn’t believe the perfectness of the wave.” “I think every surfer at some point has probably dreamt of having a wave like this available,” Perrow says. “People have been trying to achieve this for a long time. I wasn’t sure if I would ever see it.” As commissioner, Perrow is charged with “upholding the integrity of the sport.” Among his jobs, then, will be figuring out how and where to use Slater’s wave. Speaker and Hardy are both cagey about a commercial rollout. “It’s so early,” Hardy says.

“We’re literally still testing and refining.” They know, though, that some pros and fans are fearful about what Slater’s wave could do to competition. Critics worry that it could obviate the variability of nature and the acquired art of choosing which wave in a swell will be the best, both of which are essential to the sport’s identity. “It’s really important for everybody to know that we’re not moving away from the oceans, at all,” Speaker says. “The WSL is the world’s best surfers on the world’s best waves. This is just an enhancement to the tour. We will always have a majority of the surf contests take place in the ocean.” Now that the pool’s location is public, and even tagged on Google Maps, the company has had to button up the security. There’s a guard at the gate when I visit in late May, and surveillance cameras cover the property. Still, drones have buzzed over numerous times and once a helicopter came in low, with a man clearly filming out the side, so the hydrofoil—the wave’s secret weapon—is camouflaged from above.

If you watch any of the videos, shot exclusively by KSWC-sanctioned personnel, they’re carefully cropped so as not to reveal much of a hulking, whirring metal ram as it’s dragged along a rail under the water. (The hydrofoil is separated from surfers by netting.) Just before sunset, Slater gets word that the crew has finished some maintenance and that the machine, powered by solar-generated electricity, is warm enough for a run. Slater zips up a short-sleeved wetsuit and grabs a board from his new line. He left Quiksilver in 2014 to start his own clothing company, Outerknown. He cut ties with his board sponsor around the same time, and for all of the 2015 season, Slater rode a naked board, opting to earn nothing on the two most marketable surfaces a surfer has—the top and bottom of the board. In April he introduced his own line of boards in partnership with Firewire Surfboards, a manufacturer that adheres to environmentally friendly practices.

Slater steps gingerly through the acres of mulch that lies along the length of the lake around the eucalyptus trees that shade an old driveway, and climbs up over the side of the lake’s banks just under the newly constructed control tower. There, inside a glass-fronted box, the control system runs on custom software. He slips into the water and paddles out to the middle of the lake as a cable that runs the length of the hydrofoil housing goes taut, sounding as if someone is whizzing along a zipline. Then, in the distance, it begins. A head-high swell rises up suddenly and grows in size as the hydrofoil gains speed. Slater glances back over his shoulder and paddles fast, matching his speed to the wave’s and, as the swell hits the point at which the lake’s bottom—by depth and contour—forces it to break, Slater is up, tucking into a barrel that curls perfectly and never breaks.

When the pros were onsite, Nat Young stayed in one of these tubes for nearly 30 seconds, by far the longest barrel ride of his life, and later said, almost mystified, “every drop was falling where it had to fall.” Slater, though, pops out of the tube and cuts upward, ascending to the top of the wave and then slashing hard as the roaring wall of water carries him past a row of spectators. The run lasts nearly 30 seconds. “In nature there are very few if any waves this long,” Hardy says. The wave is more powerful in person than on film, without question. Slater makes it look easy, but even he wasn’t quite prepared for the speed; back in December, he missed his first paddle. Another pro, he says, fell on his first three attempts. But this is the foil firing at 85 percent of its maximum power. Slater’s girlfriend, an amateur, has ridden a smaller wave, and so has a 48-year-old water skier who lives next door. He’d never surfed before, but he got up on his first wave and rode it the entire length of the lake.

“I don’t know how many people we’ll put in here who’ve never surfed before,” Slater says. “But that right there is the proof.” He likes to say that this is “Version 1.0”—a “shot in the dark” full-scale prototype that shocked them all by actually working. He’s already messing with the shape of the lake’s floor, and the foil’s design. It can be smaller or much larger and, with some changes to the engineering, even installed in a circular pool, so that a surfer could, in theory, ride forever. “That’s the dream,” Slater says. The cost of a system will depend on many variables, most obviously the size of the pool and the foil. “If you said $2 million you wouldn’t be wrong, and if you said $20 million you wouldn’t be wrong either,” he says. “It’s literally like a buffet.” Behind him, the sun hangs just over the tree line, and storm clouds are building. An orange California glow has settled upon the place. Slater, shivering, wants to get into the hot tub that was just installed, but he can’t leave until he hears what the visitors think of the wave he’s been dreaming about since childhood.

It’s seems so unnatural to see something like that here, someone says, gesturing at the miles of nothing in every direction. Slater laughs, then stops and assumes a faux-serious face. “Wait,” he says. “You’re supposed to say it seems natural.” Corrects location of "Pipeline" in 18th paragraph. The story previously updated with news about the acquisition of Kelly Slater Wave Co. by World Surf League in the third and fourth paragraphs. Editors Kelly Slater - Mangrove Monkey Kelly Slater Home / Kelly Slater Robert Kelly Slater is an American professional surfer known for his competitive prowess and style. He has been crowned ASP World Tour Champion a record 11 times, including 5 consecutive titles in 1994–98. He is the youngest at age 20 and the oldest at age 39 to win the title. Upon winning his 5th world title in 1997, Slater passed Australian surfer Mark Richards to become the most successful champion in the history of the sport. In 2007 he also became the all-time leader in career event wins by winning the Boost Mobile Pro event at Lower Trestles near San Clemente, California.

The previous record was held by Slater’s childhood hero, three-time world champion Tom Curren. After earlier being awarded the title prematurely as a result of a miscalculation by the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP), on November 6, 2011 Slater officially won his eleventh ASP world title at the Rip Curl Pro Search San Francisco, by winning his 4th round heat. In May 2005, in the final heat of the Billabong Tahiti Pro contest at Teahupo’o, Slater became the first surfer ever to be awarded two perfect scores for a total 20 out of 20 points under the ASP two-wave scoring system (the corresponding honor under the previous three-wave system belongs to fellow American Shane Beschen who achieved the feat in 1996). He did it again on June 2013 at the quarter finals at the Volcom Fiji Pro with two perfect ten waves, only the fourth person in history to do so. Since 1990, Slater had been sponsored primarily by surfwear industry giant Quiksilver until his recent departure on April 1, 2014 to collaborate with fashion brand conglomerate Kering .

Kelly exclusively rides Channel Islands surfboards equipped with his own signature series of FCS fin masons. Slater was born on February 11, 1972 in Cocoa Beach, Florida, where he continues to reside. He is the son of Judy (Moriarity) and Stephen Slater. He has a teenage daughter named Taylor, and has Syrian (from a great-grandfather) and Irish ancestry. He has an older brother, Sean, and a younger brother, Stephen. In his spare time Slater enjoys playing the guitar, composing sonnets and spending quality time with longtime girlfriend, Kalani Miller who often travels and supports him on the ASP World Tour. Some of his favorite surf spots include Mondos in Ventura, California, Pipeline in Hawaii, Kirra in Australia, Jeffreys Bay in South Africa, Minis in Ireland, Taghazout in Morocco, Soup Bowls in Barbados, and Sebastian Inlet near his home in Florida. He is also an avid golfer, with a +2 handicap. Slater is also interested in the sport of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

He is a blue belt.[8] Some of his surfing inspirations are Andy Irons, Shane Dorian, Josh Kerr, Ian Michaelson (music producer of San Luis Obispo, California), Drew Phelps, Joseph Neves, Hunter Collins, Andrew Bloom, Ken Wells, and Dane Reynolds. Slater played the recurring character Jimmy Slade on eight episodes of the popular TV show Baywatch in the early 1990s. He appeared in an episode of the reality show The Girls Next Door, and has starred in many surf films during his career. In the late 1990s Slater, with friends and fellow pro surfers Rob Machado and Peter King, formed a band called The Surfers. The trio released an album in 1998 titled Songs from the Pipe, a reference to the famous surf spot Pipeline on Oahu, Hawaii. Kelly toured Australia with his band, performing in venues such as the Opera House and parliament house. He was given an honorary membership to the Rickson Cricket Club in northwest Sydney. Slater performed a song with Ben Harper during Harper’s concert in Santa Barbara on August 1, 2006.

He also performed Rockin’ in the Free World with grunge band Pearl Jam on July 7, 2006 in San Diego. In 1999, he appeared alongside Garbage singer Shirley Manson in the promotional video for the band’s single “You Look So Fine”. He played a man washed up on a seashore, then rescued by Manson. In 2003 Slater released his autobiography, Pipe Dreams: A Surfer’s Journey. In 2008 he released a second book with Phil Jarratt, entitled “Kelly Slater: For the Love”. In addition to the ASP tour, Slater competed in the X-Games in 2003 and 2004. In 2004, Slater completed his Masters Degree in Criminal Law at Sydney University, Australia. Slater began studying for the degree in 1998, but because of his schedule had to study part-time. Slater is a fundraiser and spokesperson for suicide prevention awareness. He has surfed in celebrity events for Surfers Against Suicide, telling sports website ‘Athletes Talk’: “I’ve lost a couple of friends myself to suicide and it’s just a horrible thing that can be prevented.

People get in this dark place and they don’t know what to do so it’s always nice to see a non-profit that isn’t turning into anything else other than just trying to help people. Slater is also an accomplished golfer and guitarist, and in 2006 played live in San Diego, California with Pearl Jam. He also has an interest in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Slater is passionate about preserving oceans globally and protecting temperate reefs in California through his relationship with Reef Check. On May 8, 2010 the United States House of Representatives honored Slater in H. Res. 792 for his “outstanding and unprecedented achievements in the world of surfing and for being an ambassador of the sport and excellent role model.” This resolution, sponsored by Florida representative Bill Posey and sponsored by 10 representatives, passed without objection by a voice vote. Famous Surfers | List of the Top Well-Known Surfers List of Famous Surfers 11k views 232 items tags f t p @ List of famous surfers , with photos, bios, and other information when available. Who are the top surfers in the world?

This includes the most prominent surfers, living and dead, both in America and abroad. This list of notable surfers is ordered by their level of prominence, and can be sorted for various bits of information, such as where these historic surfers were born and what their nationality is. The people on this list are from different countries, but what they all have in common is that they're all renowned surfers. List features people like Lena Yada and Andy Irons. From reputable, prominent, and well known surfers to the lesser known surfers of today, these are some of the best professionals in the surfer field. If you want to answer the questions, "Who are the most famous surfers ever?" and "What are the names of famous surfers?" then you're in the right place. (232 items) List Photo: Freebase /Fair use Z G Options B Comments & Embed 1 The Last Best Surfer | SURFER Magazine Follow SURFER Magazine The Last Best Surfer Kelly Slater is known as the best surfer in the world. But will anyone ever agree on that title again?

March 30, 2016 By Justin Housman If you’re the sort of surfer who takes time to read this magazine and aren’t simply flipping through the pages to drool over the photos, then I’m confident I can sketch a spot-on picture of you, dear reader. You’re a man, roughly 31 years old. You’re a goofyfoot, and you surf twice a week. You first got tubed on a trip to Costa Rica when you were 19. You work as a sales rep for a beer distribution company in Ocean City, New Jersey. You drive a 2009 Subaru Forester (blue; dent in right rear fender), you have an Australian sheepdog called Randy, your favorite band is The Pixies (well, you tell people that, but really it’s the Dave Matthews Band), your wife’s name is Robin, and she has a double-jointed elbow. Her left. What? None of that is true, you say? You’re actually a 60-year-old woman in San Diego? An 18-year old college kid in Hawaii? A bored truck driver reading an issue you found in a Florida rest stop? Fine.

For the purposes of this column, it doesn’t actually matter. Regardless of your age, your dog’s name, where in the world you surf, or even if you surf, you almost certainly believe that Kelly Slater is the undisputed Greatest Surfer of All Time (trumpet sound). What you might not be aware of, however, is that Kelly Slater will also be the last undisputed Greatest Surfer of All Time. No one after Slater will hold that position again, from now until the sun expands, consuming everything we’ve ever known. And it has nothing to do with Slater’s surfing talent (talented as he certainly is). The culture itself has shifted. It’s worth pointing out just how long Slater has held the GOAT title. Any surfer still breathing has witnessed at least part of Slater’s brilliant career. Retired surfers who haven’t paid a shred of attention to competitive surfing in years(and have therefore missed out on the joys of WSL-commentary-caused eye rolling) likely remember Slater’s ascendance in the early 1990s. Menehune-age fans continue to fight to the death in the Pipeline shorebreak for pieces of Slater’s busted boards.

Had we not stopped stapling posters into the centerfolds of surf magazines, even cooler-than-thou teenagers in 2015 would be ripping out the Slater pinups and Scotch taping them to their bedroom walls. The point is, no other top-of-the-heap surf god has had Slater’s kind of shelf life. Combine that longevity with the scientifically documented fact that Slater was sent to Earth as a child to avoid the annihilation that doomed his home planet of hyper-advanced surfing beings and you get a level of universal appeal that is never happening again. Ever. Here’s why: There’s just too much good surfing today. Too many great surfers in too many places, riding too many different kinds of waves on too many kinds of surfboards for any one of them to capture the public’s attention and hold it the way Slater has for the last 20-plus years. The act of surfing has splintered into a million different wave-riding possibilities, all of them thoroughly documented and watchable at any moment with one click on a million different media platforms. Who can possibly process and rank all that surfing anymore?

Combine Slater’s longevity with the scientifically documented fact that he was sent to Earth as a child to avoid the annihilation that doomed his home planet of hyper-advanced surfing beings and you get a level of universal appeal that is never happening again. Ever. In the years before the Internet—and you may even have the faintest memories of this—mankind often huddled together for warmth in front of the warm glow of a television set, the choices of what to watch limited by the particular benevolence of the network and, later, the cable gods. Magazines were looked to as a source for—believe it or not—cutting-edge news, especially in the surf world. If you wanted to watch a surf movie, and you were anything like me, you and a roommate argued over whose turn it was to scrounge up $1.87, then went to the video-rental place and pawed through grimy videocassette cases, praying that they had the newest TearDevils flick. The limited surf-media bandwidth meant that your surf heroes could only be people you’d seen surf in person, surfers you’d seen surf on VHS, or surfers you’d seen in a magazine. That was pretty much it.

It also meant that videographers and magazine editors were effectively curating the selection of surfers who were eligible for superstar status. It was far easier for people to agree that Slater was the best we’d ever seen because, for the most part, we were all watching the same surfers surf at all the same places while riding the same boards. (This doesn’t explain the strange coterie of people who claimed that Joe Crimo was the best surfer in the world because he could do shuv-its. Nothing will ever explain those people.) That kind of media homogeneity is all but gone in today’s surf culture, and much of that change is due to an expanded surfboard menu. As recently as the ’90s, your choices of a daily driver were just about restricted to 6-foot-plus thrusters or high-performance longboards. Busy lineups these days, however, are likely to include shortboards, SUPs, mid-lengths, old-school single-fin logs, and a few bodysurfers darting around with hand-planes. Plus, each of these different forms of surfcraft has its own websites, video edits, magazines, and cliques, with its own constellation of surf stars and heroes.

And that’s without even mentioning the divides in shortboard circles. WSL jocks and pro freesurfing hipsters have their very own hierarchies. The big-wave contingent does too. None of that variety looks to be fading away anytime soon. As the digital media landscape further carves itself into niche-ier and niche-ier slices, there’ll be an ever-widening smorgasbord of opinions about the best surfer in the world, and that division makes it almost impossible to imagine a future surf star having the universal appeal of Slater, regardless of his or her talent. “Few men try for best ever,” Richard Ben Kramer once wrote in a profile of baseball great Ted Williams. “And Ted Williams is one of those.” Kelly Slater is one of the few who, like Teddy Ballgame, made good on his quest to stand atop the summit of best ever. But Slater did Williams one better. Through longevity, but also sheer historical luck, Slater will never have to climb down to make room for another. He’s the last best surfer.

Question: American 'Kelly Slater' is best known for which sport?
Answer: Surfing